Museums & Heritage:Bentley Priory Museum

Bentley Priory Museum is an independent museum and registered charity based in North West London within an historic mansion house and tells the important story of how the Battle of Britain was won.

The challenge

Bentley Priory Museum is open four days a week with staff working alongside a team of more than 90 volunteers. It offers a museum shop and café and attracts more than 8,000 visitors a year including school and group visits. With visitor numbers rising year on year since it opened in 2013, a ticketing and membership system which could cope with Gift Aid donations and which ensured a smooth customer journey became essential.

The solution

The Trustees at Bentley Priory Museum recognized that the existing till system no longer met the needs of the museum. It was not able to process Gift Aid donations while membership applications were carried out on paper and then processed by volunteers where time allowed. Vennersys was able to offer a completely new integrated admissions, membership, reporting and online booking system for events for Bentley Priory Museum. Their customers can purchase event tickets online in advance, and the Vennersys team provided full support to staff and volunteers via on-site training, phone support and remote support to help them resolve any issues.

Venpos at Bentley Priory Museum

Bentley Priory Museum began working with Vennersys in late 2017 and needed a quick turnaround which meant their new system was up and running by January 2018.

Christina Avramakis, Museum Operations Manager at Bentley Priory Museum, said: “Using the Vennersys system has certainly saved a lot of administration time as memberships were done by volunteers on paper then inputted, and with a separate card machine and till system the amount of the sale had to be inputted twice.

“Memberships are no longer handwritten but can be printed off and are scannable, while Gift Aid donations are far quicker to process. The system has also been helpful when it comes to ticketing for special events like our concerts and talk programmes. Previously this couldn’t be done through our website but now they can be booked online, whereas before everything had to be booked via phone or face to face. That’s been important this year as it’s the centenary year of the RAF and we’ve put on a lot of events, and it has allowed us to implement reserved place settings as these have proved very popular.

“Our gift shop is within our reception area and the till system is also used in our café, so it’s been helpful for checking stock levels, as well as monitoring how many people have come through the door that day.

“We’re certainly very happy with the system and the service we’ve received from the Vennersys team and I would be happy to recommend them to others.”